


</b> Writing Her Own History

by tosca1390



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-14
Updated: 2010-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-14 15:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/150967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>There had to be more to her own story.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	</b> Writing Her Own History

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://igrockspock.livejournal.com/profile)[**igrockspock**](http://igrockspock.livejournal.com/), who requested: Star Trek, Winona, _the history of my stupidity will not be written_.

*

“I don’t feel right,” Winona said as she stretched out in bed, watching George dress in their close quarters.

He smiled at her, soft and gentle, starlight reflected in his eyes. “You look all kinds of right.”

She tossed a pillow at him, frowning. “I barely fit in the botany lab anymore.”

“You’re exaggerating,” he said, coming over to her side of their too-small bed and kissing her lightly. “You’re beautiful.”

A smile pressed right through her skin, something she just couldn’t help when he said those things so matter-of-factly, like air and space and Federation ideals. “Okay.”

He sat down lightly, in an attempt not to crease his uniform. “Now, you don’t feel right.”

She shrugged. “Weird. Uncomfortable. Baby’s shifting, maybe.”

“You’re the one who’s done this before,” he said, laying a hand on her rounded stomach, the skin taut and too-warm.

“Sam was easy,” she murmured, thinking of her Earth-bound boy, safely ensconced with George’s sister in California, four and serious. “This one is feisty.”

“We’d be lucky to have another one as easy as Sam,” he said with a wide white smile. “Go to medbay if you feel off, sweetheart. Don’t be stubborn.”

She shook her head. “It’s nothing. We’ll be home in a week. I’m fine,” she said, covering his hand with hers. She refused to let pregnancy weaken her, to make her less than the Starfleet officer she was.

He kissed her again, warp a milky-white shadow through the porthole behind him. “You don’t have to be so straight-faced about it.”

She did, though, as she kissed him again, sure she was about to make him late for his shift on the bridge. This baby was an accidental surprise which she felt entirely stupid for letting occur in the midst of their second five-year tour together. The only reason the _Kelvin_ was going back to Earth a month before their leave was because they didn’t want to risk having a human birth mid-mission. Then George would be off again with the _Kelvin_ to finish the last two years, and she’d be alone with a preschooler and a baby. She tried not to resent him; he was the first officer, and he’d earned it.

But there had to be more to her own story than just babies and a few years in space, waiting for her husband to come home year after year.

“You need to go,” she said finally, his mouth just breaths from hers. Inside, the baby shifted; she thought she could feel it breathing through her skin, pushing and grasping for the way out.

 _You’re a boy, aren’t you_ , she thought wryly as George found his feet and smoothed down his uniform. _I’m doomed to be surrounded by men_.

“Yeah. I’m off at 1600 hours. Dinner in the mess?” he asked, his hands slowly falling from her curved body.

She nodded, and he smiled again, kissed her forehead, and left her with the slow, sinking realization that this was not discomfort, but labor.

What seemed like years later (but was just hours, really), with a sleeping Jim in her arms, her eyes scratchy and red, she had no thoughts for labs or ships or destiny. George was gone, swallowed into the vastness of space, and she felt void of everything.

*

“So now what will you do?”

Winona looked dead ahead, over the shoulders of all the admirals and commanders and scientists dressed in black at a memorial for just a few compared to eight hundred still alive, because of one. A baby on her shoulder, Sam stuck like glue to her side, his hands fisted in her skirt, and all she could do was stare straight ahead.

“What will I do when?” she said finally, voice cool.

The admirals, the commanders, the scientists, all started, as if shocked. “Now, after George—“

“I will work,” she said to each of them in turn, tear-less and settled. She’d cried in the shuttle, Jim’s open newborn mouth and pale soft skin catching her tears, but now, she had no more tears. “There are plenty of opportunities still here for me in Starfleet.”

They all took a moment to stare at Jim, who was suspiciously quiet and wide-eyed, and blink at Sam, who merely shuffled closer to her and glared balefully at them all with their decorated chests and their close-cropped misunderstandings. When they looked at her, they saw George dying in silent flames, a tearful last few minutes recorded for posterity and lessons to be learned, a grieving widow to be shuttled away into morning for life; when she looked at them, she saw her history stretching behind and in front of her, glaringly empty of anything except sons unless she took a stand.

She would teach Sam and Jim to stand tall and proud, to be stupidly stubborn in the face of more stupidity, as she was now. That’s what George would have wanted. That’s what he loved about her.

“I will work,” she repeated to them all over and over, holding her boys close for as long as she could before space and destiny called to her again.

*


End file.
